


Mr Adams

by Repeatinglitanies



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Gen, Multiverse, Pseudo-Incest, Pseudoscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 10:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22848424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Repeatinglitanies/pseuds/Repeatinglitanies
Summary: No one really knew anyone in the Commission. None had a more elusive background than their current head, Mr Adams.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 22
Kudos: 124





	Mr Adams

It was to be expected that no one really knew each other within the Commission. One can speculate where one’s colleagues came from. And in the case of an organization heavily involved in the safe and constant use of time travel, the question of what decade, what century or even what millennia one’s coworkers originated became a hot topic of gossip at lunch and at the newly mandated coffee breaks.

Of course, the gossip can more logically and likely be heard within the supposedly hallowed halls and offices of Commission headquarters. While the Commission as a whole claimed to have hard-working and dedicated employees, they were mostly bureaucrats that somehow found the time out of their hectic and busy schedules to chat about the weather, make small-talk, exchange backhand compliments and spread unfounded rumours about safe targets like the field agents or the ass of a supervisor/manager/department head who thought that raising one’s voice and humiliating one’s subordinates in front of the whole team would make everyone be more productive. 

It went without saying that such topics were done after an extensive sweep of a fairly isolated spot away from the ears of those that could and would literally kill them for even discussing it.

This wasn’t to say that the field agents were a group of taciturn loners, steeped in grit and stoicism. They could be just as loquacious. In some cases, even more so. Field agents mostly had better opportunities to tell more interesting stories given how their line of work involved the consequences of a world inhabited by individuals gifted with free choice. 

Sometimes, missions go off without a hitch. Ordinary people reacting just as expected and oh so predictably that one agent almost quit out of what he called “boredom.” Other times, it was all hands on deck with a whole strike team having to be called in due to an event that somehow snowballed from something as mundane as deciding to wear a different shirt to work.

In a lot of ways, the Commission wasn’t any different from a normal work place. It valued efficiency and competence, demanded confidentiality on proprietary material, meted out a list of duties and responsibilities depending on an employee’s position, remunerated everyone the performed a service for it and penalizing those that had betrayed it in some shape or form.

On the other hand, no sane person would call the Commission a normal, wholesome or safe working environment. Field agents were recruited mainly for their propensity for violence and (maybe even more importantly) their willingness to follow orders. They were the ones who preferred and even reveled in getting their hands dirty. In most cases though, dirty hands actually meant stained red with blood. Crude and barbaric it may be, but violence had long been an essential arsenal to the business of imposing one’s will upon another.

While the organization preferred its agents to stay in the shadows, its long experience had taught it that situations inevitably arise wherein the use of force was the only message that wasted no time in being understood. Hence, the need for loyal field agents who could be onsite to interfere when needed. Words commonly associated with the Commission’s field agents include psychopath, sociopath, monster, crazy, lacking in empathy, antisocial personality disorder and the plea of “Please don’t kill me.”

The desk jockeys, office workers, bureaucrats or whatever equivalent one would prefer to call them were the ones the more closely resembled what would be considered normal. Relatively speaking, that is. While not at their physical peak as their “on-the-ground” counterparts, the bureaucrats were mid-level management, maybe even top management themselves, providing the orders that could range from ensuring two people bump into each other to annihilating a whole village. 

Some of these so-called desk jockeys were responsible for more deaths than even the field agents who did the deed with their own bare hands. And they did so simply by processing forms and sending it down the Commission’s pneumatic tubes.

As with any organization, where various numbers of people (each with their own backgrounds, point of views and way of doing things) are forced to work together, differences and disagreements arise. Oft-repeated refrains had come from many sides. The most common of which are the field agents bemoaning how the bureaucrats do not have the slightest idea of how the real world works and the bureaucrats complaining about how field agents can’t see beyond their own circumstances by sweating the small stuff when the bigger picture was at stake.

In the Commission’s long history, the clashes and occasional skirmishes between these two opposing sides had never really amounted to much. The Commission paid close attention to history and made it a point to keep a balance between these two sides. This was all well and good to the top brass. Because so much of their resources had been allocated into protecting the organization from an “attack” from outside. 

Perhaps, “attack” was too harsh a word. But for an institution that dealt in and peddled with time, the slightest deviation in the timeline could be catastrophic. For as long as any could remember, the majority of the Commission’s top executives had been huge proponents of the Butterfly Effect wherein the smallest change could have dire consequences somewhere down the line.

Thus, for a very long time, the Commission focused on maintaining one timeline to ensure that its desired outcome comes into effect at the desired time, which only goes to show that even active observers of history (whether it had run its course, is still in-progress or in-the-making) could be actively choose to be blind.

Because time has no companion as constant as change. 

While a state could last for a long time, it eventually finds itself at a crossroads where the choices are either to become something else or turn into nothing. Whichever path ends up chosen, change happens. Time will always have its way. Because the only reliable marker for the passage of time is through change. And time seems to like to make its presence known.

The top executives believed that they had essentially become the masters of time itself. But as they soon found out, time bowed to no one. Well, at least, not to them.

This first presented itself when someone theorized that preserving one timeline was only preventing the creation of other timelines. The existence of choice and free will meant that a timeline was meant to spawn other universes, ones where a person chose path B rather than path A for example. This theory basically states that time wants change. To force it to repeat the same pattern would only cause it to self-destruct. 

That same person turned out to be an advocate of moderation though. Because he or she (no one ever remembered who this person was) also warned that propagating multiple timelines through the use of constant time travel was also a bad idea. Time might instinctively want change. But in general, it also despised being manipulated. 

There hasn’t been enough data yet on how many times one person could safely be allowed to time travel and change history without creating an artificial universe. But if someone were to abuse it enough times, the resulting artificial universe would collapse on itself in a matter of weeks and tear through the fabric of the parent universe. While not enough to destroy the parent universe, creating enough of the artificial universes could very well bring the parent universe down.

At first, most of the Commission dismissed the theory as poppycock or “bullshit” for those that had no qualms about being vulgar. Unfortunately for the top brass, Mr Adams started to make his own calculations and concluded that this theory held merit.

Some would say that one man couldn’t possibly hold sway over a huge chunk of Commission personnel. Certainly, not someone as far from charming as Mr Adams.

No one other than his direct supervisor, the Handler, knew who he was or where and when he had come from. To all outward appearances, Mr Adams was a man at the prime of life. He neither looked like a young man that just left school nor a middle aged man bogged down by life’s responsibilities.

This wasn’t to say that he acted as though he hadn’t a care in the world. There was something about Mr Adams that gave off an impression that he had been through a lot, even if it did not seem to have affected his physical appearance in the slightest.

Though many (including the Handler herself, if rumors were to be believed) found him attractive with his strong jaw and vibrant eyes, his generally sour disposition and sharp tongue were immediately made manifest whenever he was required at headquarters. Unsurprisingly, these qualities had turned off plenty of secret and not-so secret admirers. 

And those that still felt up to attempting any sort of intimacy with him were quickly disillusioned by the swift introduction of his Bowie knife.

It was safe to say that Mr Adams did not suffer fools gladly.

Outside of his hearing, this made him a popular subject of gossip and innuendo. Some think that he had the bad boy aura or at least that quality that had women writing to, start relationships with and even marry men behind bars for heinous crimes. Why else would he still have people who looked at him with some creepy mixture of lust and longing?

It didn’t help that Mr Adams kept himself apart, practically broadcasting to all that he thought himself better than everyone. He did whatever he wanted and didn’t care what other people thought of him. Or at the very least, made a damn good show of it.

He had started out as a field agent. An excellent one, if the reports and first-hand accounts were to be believed. Mr Adams was a savage and efficient killing machine. That got him the respect of other field agents. Some of them even treated him like a rock star or at least, a living legend that they’d be proud to work alongside. It went without saying that this only came after the fact. During missions with him, they all had moments in time where they had wished they were dead. Or better yet, that Mr Adams was dead.

But after the first time a hapless, young field agent had enough and decided to act upon his murderous instincts and feelings of rage for Mr Adams, no one ever made an attempt against his life again. What Mr Adams did to his would-be assassin only cemented his place in the Commission as a figure that was both fear and awe-inspiring.

Hence, everyone always took a step back, a second look or both whenever they got a good look at his hand. Truth be told, Mr Adams made no attempts to hide it. Some wondered if it was some sort of red herring to confuse people that actively investigated his personal history. While some wondered why he kept a token of his past, a token that could so easily expose his weaknesses once someone or a group of someones managed to find and connect enough of the puzzle pieces of his life. 

But Mr Adams remained unconcerned. Or perhaps, he was simply a very convincing actor. After all, no one was capable of completely erasing their past. And the Commission did not lack resources in unearthing histories, especially those that people would rather prefer stay buried.

At the time Mr Adams first came to the attention of the top executives, he was simply a rising star in the Handler’s Corrections Department, tasked with ensuring that any missteps in the timeline were sorted out. As per company policy, all of the Handler’s files pertaining to Mr Adams’ history was handed over to HR, which unfortunately burned down not long after. 

After such an unprecedented incident which merely turned out to be the first in a series of unfortunate events (more missing files, accidental deaths and the like), no one ever did pay attention to Mr Adams’ records. With a sequence of figurative fires that she had to put out, the Handler never did gain enough time to put together another file on Mr Adams.

By the time anyone even became suspicious of Mr Adams’ intentions, enough to start a discreet investigations on him, it had been too late. 

Choosing to storm the Commission as something akin to a one-man army was merely Mr Adams’ way of psychologically breaking the top echelons down. No one, not even the Handler had expected him to openly challenge the organization in its entirety by starting a rain of violence from the time he entered HQ.

Mr Adams didn’t even seem to have broken a sweat as he alternated between shooting, slicing and cutting victims that had the misfortune of crossing his path. And he was so fast. First standing at one point of the hall only to suddenly appear at the other end. For some witnesses, the sight of him going about his bloody business without the slightest change in expression was the most horrifying part of what they would call the worst day of their lives.

It wasn’t even the actual carnage being inflicted on people they’ve worked alongside that got to them. What really bothered them was the realization that everything they had once thought to be true for the Commission were lies and smokescreens all along.

The Commission was supposed to offer stability. It’s whole raison d’etre was to ensure that the timeline was preserved. Nothing was supposed to change. Bureaucrats went to their offices, made their analyses and gave the necessary instructions that would keep time just the way it was. Field agents used the suitcases to travel in time and execute those instructions.

As long as everyone did as they were supposed to, everything should have been fine.

But clearly, as Mr Adams painted the white, marble floors red, their world and their very lives as they knew it had been turned upside down in a matter of seconds. Not even the strike team that quickly responded to the never-before-used distress signal was a match for him.

By the time Mr Adams reached the boardroom where all the top executives were in attendance, it only took him 20 seconds to fill the space he had forced them to vacate.

From then on, the Commission did not concern itself with simply one timeline. It looked at all the timelines, some of which multiplied exponentially while some just as quickly destroyed themselves. Eventually, no one was surprised when some universes died. Around the fourth or fifth universe, they had become inured to it. 

Besides, by the time anyone noticed a universe had essentially destroy itself, all Commission staff had been indoctrinated with new dogma. Even the Handler was buying it and became Mr Adams’ second-in-command. 

Everything naturally lead to entropy. And as far as Mr Adams was concerned, no one should really care about the end of one world as long as no outside interference brought it about. By “outside interference,” what he really meant was time travelers. Not including Commission employees though. 

From its original modus operandi of interfering with the course of human events, the organization now adopted an almost strict hands-off policy. For better of worse, this meant that if a world prospered or chose to annihilate itself, it would strictly be due to choices made by that world’s inhabitants as a whole.

The only exception given to the non-interference rule was in regards to the endemic time travelers. While few and far between (with many universes having none at all), the endemics invariably get addicted to their newfound powers of manipulation and control of events. Understandably, it was only human to want to do things all over again, especially when an event caused pain and suffering. It was basically a reset button that enabled a do-over. And who wouldn’t want to take the chance to erase such events completely?

Unfortunately, the endemics countless attempts eventually lead to artificial universes, ones that collapse on themselves in a matter of weeks and threaten the very fabric of the parent timeline with their death throes. The greatest worry was that such an “unnatural” death would start a domino effect that would cause the same reactions throughout the multiple universes, taking out everyone and everything including everyone within the Commission.

Thus, after a significant amount of re-training, field agents acted more like cops than mafia. The bureaucrats had more or less the same amount of paperwork but definitely less instances of termination orders. Instead of making time work for them, they now seem to work for time.

Once an endemic was discovered, risks will be assessed and consequences measured. Depending on the nature of the endemic time traveller, the multiverse could be saved simply by burning down research papers, destroying their crude time machines or generally influencing events to turn the endemic from the subject of time travel. But in certain cases, no amount of “environmental” factors could deter the endemic from jumping through time. In which case, the Commission would have to resort to a more permanent solution which could range from getting the endemic addicted to drugs to actively causing death.

Everyone in the organization was supposed to be competent enough to get the job done. The thought of an artificial universe being created, let alone one ready to explode and be one step closer to taking everything with it, all under their very noses, should have been inconceivable. 

And yet, that was exactly what Mr Adams was just informed of after one of the mandated coffee breaks he instituted.

While his first impulse would have been to murder the whole team responsible for it, his mind was already flitting through possibilities to salvage the situation. A dedicated crunching of numbers produced the conclusion that this particular artificial universe would not cause a domino effect with its passing. But provided that enough energy was taken out of the aforementioned artificial universe.

Adams was going to terminate (in every sense of the word) the person responsible for this oversight. One that allowed this artificial universe to be created in the first place. But before that, he had business to take care of.

That meant having to deal with the end of one world himself. 

But for all his confidence, what he learned about the circumstances that lead to their current predicament gave him pause. It was never going to dissuade him from doing what he had to. But he certainly hoped that no one in the briefing room noticed how the information shook him. Then again, his employees knew him well enough to keep their thoughts to themselves and to keep whatever passed in this room confidential if they valued their lives.

So he went back to focusing on the current mission.

____________________

Vanya woke up on an unfamiliar bed in a strange room situated in what she could only describe as a foreign land. She briefly remembered being surrounded by white light while everything around her crumbled to dust as she clung to-

Vanya had to wrack her head on who she was holding on to. Because for the life of her, she couldn’t remember. Just as she couldn’t recall who she was and where she came from. All she remembered was her name. And that image of everything turning into nothing as she tried her best. 

The question was: “What?”

She was trying her best to do something. What was it?

Suddenly, the room felt like it was closing in on her. Vanya needed air. She needed to go out and get away from this room. In her panic, she tried to take out the thing on her hand that she would later recognize to have been administering IV fluids to her body. 

“Stop that! You’re going to hurt yourself.”

But Vanya wasn’t listening. She was too focused on escaping to register what was being said. She struggled to take the thing out until a large hand grabbed an arm while another served to keep the infusion in place.

His hands were warm on her clammy skin. And she briefly noticed the ring on his finger. It looked like a wedding ring.

Then, she looked down at her own hand, the one that tried to remove anything keeping her down. To her surprise, she wore a ring identical to his.

___________________

According to reports, the Umbrella Academy was founded by a billionaire, inventor, and Olympic gold medalist called Reginald Hargreeves. Its first and only students were his seven adopted children. Each one happened to have developed otherworldly powers. Hargreeves subjected most of the children to experiments meant to display and develop these extraordinary abilities. However the resulting abuse and neglect left permanent scars on the children, which lead to one of them causing a mass extinction event.

Apparently, Vanya had a near-limitless amount of energy. Enough to destroy the world. Hargreeves kept her in the dark about her powers until his death. Tack on the years of neglect and psychological abuse, Vanya practically became the bomb that ended most life in her universe. Believe it or not, her powers weren’t enough to end her universe. It was only enough to end majority of life on earth. 

What truly threatened the parent universe was her adoptive brother’s numerous attempts at time travel. Number Five had the ability to jump through space and time. Whenever Vanya finally brought the day of reckoning upon life on earth, Number Five would merely jump back eight days before the apocalypse to try to prevent it.

He never did succeed even after countless attempts which only ended up creating an artificial universe. One complete with its own version of the parent universe’s inhabitants.

The artificial universe was always meant to destroy itself. But in order to detach it safely from the parent universe, which would otherwise be negatively affected by the artificial’s passing (and cause a chain reaction involving multiple universes), a huge amount of energy needed to be taken out of the equation.

And that’s why Vanya was no longer in her own universe. The only reason she wasn’t disposed of was because no one knew what would happen to the massive amounts of energy she contained should she be released from the mortal coil.

It was for the best to keep an eye on her. So Mr Adams elected to keep her close. And given how things almost went belly up when he delegated what was supposed to be a routine task to strangers, he decided to act as her warden instead.

The Commission had the best doctors and latest advancements in medicine. A thorough examination of Vanya’s condition was conducted. And the doctors didn’t have to wait for her to wake up to inform him that she was suffering from amnesia. Their machines gave a high probability that she wouldn’t remember personal memories. 

She would still remember how to play the violin or sign her name. But how she got to her level of skill or how she developed her signature would remain a mystery to her.

Mr Adams wasted no time to spin things to his advantage.

He never tried to hide the two wedding rings on his left hand, even when he had just been a lowly field agent. The smaller one now rested on Vanya’s ring finger. And as he expected, it was just the right size.

This charade of marriage gave him access to her. He had to make sure that she remained under observation. If he wasn’t around, she would have guards stationed near her quarters without raising her suspicions. 

After all, he was a powerful man and he had enemies. It was only natural that he would worry about her. That was how things would come across to Vanya.

At least, that’s what Mr Adams told his subordinates. Whether they believed it or not was not his concern. But they were all instructed to either make themselves scarce when Vanya was around or keep up the charade that she was the boss’ wife.

He knew that the Handler was skeptical of this plan. But at this point, even she wouldn’t dare openly voice it. Not within his presence, at least.

The doctors had finally declared it safe to take Vanya home with him. Though truth be told, the living space he used to store his possessions and occasionally sleep in (Commission HQ had a furnished apartment at its very center for him to use) only started to become a home once Vanya had stepped foot in it.

She was understandably wary. With no memories to guide her, everything seemed new to her. Of course, he would never tell her that it was really because she had never been there before. Not her. Nor any version of her.

For whatever inexplicable reason that never failed to amaze him, he soon realized that Vanya trusted him. He was prepared to sleep in the “guest” room, which hours before their arrival had been used for his equations. He always felt he could process the numbers better when it was literally written on the walls. Of course, he had to hire a bunch of people to erase it all. It wouldn’t look right to Vanya if she were to step into a room that looked like it belonged in a horror movie.

But it turned out that his brief moment of consideration wasn’t necessary. Vanya didn’t want to deprive him of his own bed. And he found himself lying down beside her. Soon enough, he could hear the steady sound of her breathing as she drifted to sleep. He vowed to do everything in his power to ensure she would never lose faith in him.

Home had been prepared and arranged to show pictures and memories of a shared life. One that never happened, at least not to this Vanya. There would be truth in the stories he would tell her. It all happened to Vanya. Just not this Vanya.

Despite himself, he found himself tracing the tattoo on his arm. Once upon a time, lifetimes ago, the actual number of which only he now knew, Mr Adams had been Number Five. He, along with six other children formed the inaugural class of the Umbrella Academy.

But unlike the Five of the newly defunct universe, he didn’t manifest the power to travel through space and time. Instead, he could simply manipulate time to his liking. He could halt the time of everyone around him while his time remained constant. He could undo the ravages of time on a person’s body and make it as good as new. He could stop a person from aging just as well as he could reverse or hasten aging.

Most of all, he could literally turn back his world's clock. Thus ensuring any assassination attempt would be futile because he could simply make time rewind itself. His mind remained constant even as he rewound events that had just transpired. Thus, giving him the advantage over the opponent

Time bowed to no man. That is, until Five came along.

Unlike the other Five, he stayed. Though only because it was beyond his abilities to jump through time. But because of that, he got to grow up with his Vanya, marry her and build a life with her. 

But time was a vindictive bitch.

His wife had different powers from the Vanya beside him. While this one could convert sound into energy, his wife could nullify powers. When they were younger, she could control her abilities. This ensured that he could rejuvenate her if she got sick or injured.

But it seemed that her powers grew with time. And there came a point where he had to be as far away from her as possible if he wanted to use his abilities.

Five could have lived with that. But then, they started to notice that Five no longer aged. Inevitably, Vanya left him. Not by choice though. She had lived a full life. And despite advancements in medicine and technology, there was only so much that could be done to keep her alive without making her suffer.

In the end, he had to say goodbye to the love of his life as he held her in his arms and watched whatever life that remained fade away from her tired body.

The next few years had been a blur until he crossed paths with the Handler and the Commission. He honestly only took the job because he didn’t know what else to do with himself. That is, until he heard that wonderful theory about propagating multiple universes.

Suddenly, he envisioned all the ways that a version of him and Vanya could live and actually grow old together. A different ending to his story. And that gave him a renewed sense of purpose. Sure, it also opened up possibilities of an even worse outcome than losing Vanya to old age. But that was a chance he was willing to take.

Strangely enough, he had never thought of stealing a Vanya for himself. No matter how lonely the long years without his Vanya had been.

Five certainly came a long way from the little shit he had been at 13. All he had wanted was to see that a better outcome somewhere in another life had happened. Perhaps it was pathetic. But that was all he had left. 

That was when he found out that he hadn’t really changed much at all. Because he was willing to sacrifice everything he had to get his way. Even if it meant spilling a lot of blood. Blood from other people.

So he mounted a one-man coup d’etat against the Commission's top brass. And suddenly, multiple worlds came into existence. Five didn’t have to relive the same timeline, the same trauma all over again.

Life became a little more bearable.

And now, with this new Vanya, one who can’t nullify his abilities, he had a second chance. A part of him worried about how things could go wrong. But he pushed that aside. Tomorrow, he would go back to making plans and backup plans. Assess possible outcomes and find a way to combat possible risks.

But for tonight, he would delight in the presence of the sleeping person beside him. Funny, he thought that he could compartmentalize. She wasn’t the Vanya he knew. But Five was certain that he would protect her, fight for her and kill for her if necessary. He loved her already. And he had no intention of squandering this second chance he’d been given.

This gave rise to a fear that hadn’t existed, not in a very long time. The part of him that murdered his way to the top thought it made him weak and vulnerable to attack. 

But if he was being honest with himself, he mostly couldn’t care less. This Vanya was a welcome change to what had been a rather unsatisfactory life spent without her.

For Vanya, he would challenge anyone, even Time itself, if it meant she could stay by his side forever.


End file.
